6/17/2007 @ 9:35PM

Not Quite YouTube To Go

As of this weekend, cellphone users with Web browsers could check out and play a limited library of YouTube videos via a new mobile Web portal, m.youtube.com. The preliminary launch–the video library is a work in progress–appears to mark the end of an exclusive deal between parent company
Google
and Verizon Wireless, which has been streaming some YouTube clips since last year for customers willing to pay $15 per month or $3 per day for a wireless data subscription.

The most obvious loser: Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of
Verizon Communications
and
Vodafone
, which loses the ability to sell itself as the exclusive cellular carrier of YouTube content. The winners: other mobile carriers, especially
Sprint Nextel
and
AT&T
.

Because YouTube Mobile is now freely available on the open mobile Web–outside the carriers’ hand-picked, branded content portal, or “deck”–Google doesn’t have to share revenue with the wireless operators. But the bandwidth-heavy site will probably entice more people to sign up for all-you-can-eat data plans, and Sprint has a large “third-generation” (3G) data network, ideal for streaming video wirelessly. (Sprint data plans start at $15 per month.) AT&T, which offers 3G access in 165 U.S. cities, should also see a boost from subscribers with 3G phones.

So far, despite much investment, few people are watching TV on the go–this spring, about 1.3% of U.S. wireless users watched videos on their phone, according to research firm M:Metrics. YouTube Mobile’s new broad reach could goose that percentage quickly.

Initial reports suggest streaming quality is hit-or-miss for subscribers accessing the site via a slower network called EDGE, which AT&T and Deutsche Telekom‘s
T-Mobile offer widely in the U.S. That could be bad news for would-be
Apple
iPhone buyers: Their prized gadget doesn’t support 3G. (See “Why You May Not Want An iPhone”)

The stripped-down YouTube Mobile only has a small selection of videos, similar to Verizon’s version and a flavor of YouTube set to stream this month to Apple TV devices. In short, it’s not YouTube–not now, maybe not ever. Without mobile-specific deals from content owners, it’s unlikely Google will stream some of the best stuff on YouTube to cellphones, like hastily uploaded soccer highlights or home-shopping bloopers.

In a test Sunday afternoon using a
Palm
Treo 700p on Sprint’s 3G network in New York, YouTube Mobile loaded a video–a spoof of OK Go’s treadmill music video–quickly and without problems. The quality was acceptable–not as good as the Web version of YouTube, and nowhere near as clear as new mobile-TV services like
Qualcomm
‘s MediaFlo, which Verizon Wireless and AT&T have deals to re-sell, but which requires specific phones.

Google appears to have some quirks to work out: After viewing that one video, the Treo browser got stuck in a never-ending loop between the YouTube Mobile home page–advertising clips like “Paris Hilton Prison Diaries: Day 3-Prison Cuisine”–and another page advising users to sign up for an unlimited data plan. This continued until clearing the browser’s stored “cookie” files after watching a video, and sometimes fixed itself through random clicking. It’s not clear if that’s a Google glitch or a Treo browser bug, but the site worked fine when accessed via computer.